blogosphere : Java Glossary

blogosphere

the collection of all blogs (web logs) on the Internet. Here are some of the reasons they are taking over from newsgroups as the primary forum for political discussion:

There is a moderator. His job is to filter out spam, childish posts, possibly ad hominem posts, obscenity etc. This makes for a less bleeding raw read.
The moderator can filter out posts discordant with his views. People can read only what they want to hear.
Blogs allow HTML or some subset of it. This makes for more readable posts. It also allows for embedded links.
Somebody else looks after filtering out the worst yahoos.
On some systems each user in identified by a picon. It helps keep track of who all the people are you are conversing with.
On some systems, users can rate the quality of posts, so that you can choose to read only the top-rated material saving you time.
The blog owner is a real person, and has a website of material. On the newsgroup nearly everyone is a fake person, or even if posing as a real person could be fake. The blog owner at least has to stand behind what he says, and be somewhat responsible for what his posters say.
This I think is the big one. Technopeasants can use blogs with an ordinary web browser. They don’t even have to stumble onto groups.google.com.
An evil genuis figured out how to replace random words in other people’s posts on comp.lang.java.progrogrammer with silly or obscene ones. There was no management to complain to about patching the security hole that permitted this. NNTP protocol is effectively frozen in stone by the intertia of its many users. There was no mechanism to track down and eject the fruitcake. Pretty well the only ways this could be fixed would be to redesign a whole new newsgroup-like scheme or to take vigilante action against the vandal.

blog
blogger
dooce
forum
newsgroups
picon
weblog

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